The present invention relates to data processing for supporting analysis/judgement based on human sensitivity called "kansei" such as fashion sense and preference which is a human's ambiguous reactive characteristic for a sense, and more particularly to data processing methods and apparatus suitable for supporting analysis/judgement which requires high level and various kansei.
A kansei data processing system refers to a system for processing data relative to the human's kansei. This kind of conventional system is described, for example, in Mitsuo Nagamachi, "Kansei Engineering", pp 43-84, (Kaibundo, 1989).
According to this article, when a plurality of adjective groups are inputted from a user, a conventional system (kansei engineering expert system) extracts a main image represented by the adjective groups, narrows down only such adjectives that match the image well, independently selects design elements represented by the narrowed down adjectives, and synthesizes and outputs these elements. If the user is not satisfied with the output result, the elements constituting the synthesized design are independently changed to other elements. Incidentally, the relationship between the design element and the adjective is obtained as an appraised value or score by processing survey results using Semantic Differential (SD) for the whole design including respective design elements with the evaluation theory class I.